CLOCKING OUT OF WORK AT 5:08 p.m., Jeremy gathers his things and makes his way toward the door.
“Saturday!” Corey yells from across the sea of cubicles.
Jeremy raises a hand in acknowledgment but silently breezes past the front desk and into the parking lot. He lets out a heavy sigh and feels the stress release from his body almost immediately. Life in a cubicle is truly barbaric.
As he sits down in his car, the weight of a day’s worth of sun presses upon him. Turning on the air conditioner doesn’t provide any immediate relief. Instead, he is assaulted by hot, stale air from all sides. Opening the window only slightly lessens the feeling of suffocation. As he regulates his stifled breathing in response to the burst of cool air at last pumping through the vents, Jeremy can’t help but wonder if this is how it feels to be strangled to death; a brief moment of helpless, nauseating panic followed by a sudden sense of relief.
But Jeremy isn’t interested in the business of granting relief. No, he is focused solely on inflicting pain. The mechanics of pain are both intricate and simple, a fundamental dichotomy. Physiologically, pain requires a perfect symphony of chemical reactions. Each piece hitting at just the correct time for the feeling to materialize. A stimulus sends an impulse across a peripheral nerve fiber, which is in turn perceived and identified by the somatosensory cortex. If any part of the stimulus’s journey is interrupted, then the feeling will be diminished. In contrast, the act of sending that electrical impulse on its journey to perception is something even troglodytes could master. All it takes is an object, sharp or blunt, coupled with force. What a fascinating thing.
He remembers the first time he saw pain and recognized it. He must have been seven years old, reading a book in the living room of the home he still lives in today. As he turned the page, he heard it. Outside, he listened to his father’s truck pull into the dirt driveway. The door opened and then slammed shut with a force that suggested he was keyed up. He could hear him grumbling to himself out there, cursing and spitting as he shuffled to his shed.
Jeremy jumped up and ran outside to see what was going on and when he did, he heard something new. The sound came from the bed of the pickup truck in front of him, and it was agonizing. At first, he swore there was an injured child in the back of that truck. The cry was so human and so tortured—a series of wails followed by low, painful moans. It fascinated and repelled him in equal measure, and he felt every cell in his body vibrating with anticipation. The heat of that late afternoon beat down on him like a weighted blanket, ominous and foreboding, and warning him to seek sanctuary. But still, he was compelled, as if being pulled by an invisible string, toward the screaming form in the bed of the truck. Hoisting himself up to see inside, he saw lying twisted in front of him a terrified doe. He noted her clearly broken leg and an open wound that extended from the left corner of her mouth down to her shoulder. Her sides and stomach rose and fell with such labored, excruciating breaths that air seeped from his own lungs in response. Blood dripped from her nose, and her eyes were wild with fear and pain. He could still see those eyes today when he closed his own. He couldn’t look away. For a few seconds, he just stood there, sharing a nightmarish moment with a beautiful creature.
As if on cue, music began to cut through the air. His father had switched on the ancient radio in his shed. He always liked to have music playing while working. “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” by Nancy Sinatra slithered from the speakers.
“Son, get down from there. You’re gonna scare it, and I need that goddamn screaming to stop,” his father instructed as he strolled back from the shed in the side yard.
He had a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder, and he gestured his hand to wave Jeremy away from the screaming animal before him.
“Dad, what happened?” Jeremy asked tentatively, jumping down from his vantage point.
His father ran a hand through his sandy hair and then rubbed his chin anxiously. It made a familiar scratching sound.
“She ran out too quickly in front of the truck. The damn thing was so twisted up, lying in the road. I couldn’t leave it screaming there. I didn’t have a gun with me, so here we are,” he responded matter-of-factly as he walked around to the back of the truck and pulled the tailgate down.
Jeremy could see her better now, lying on an old dirty drop cloth that was once white but had since turned a foul shade of beige from use. Stains of blood bloomed on the fabric. Now the doe’s tongue was protruding out of her mouth. As he stared, his father wheeled a large wheelbarrow over to the tailgate and looked at Jeremy.
“Good thing I got you here, boy,” he said slapping Jeremy on the back and making him lurch forward.
“What are you going to do?” he asked earnestly.
“Well, we have to kill it. We would be monsters to let it suffer for too long.”
Jeremy felt his breath hitch in his throat.
“Kill it?” he asked, never breaking his gaze from the doe’s.
“It’s life, son. You don’t let something suffer needlessly. And besides, there’s a pecking order. Some are on the top, and some are here to provide something to those on the top. This doe’s sacrifice will provide good meat,” he explained and yanked on the drop cloth, causing the injured animal to shudder with the sudden movement. “Come on, help me pull her down.”
Jeremy was awestruck. He robotically helped his father pull the drop cloth toward the tailgate and climbed into the bed with the doe to lower her down while his father pulled. Now the noises were loud and urgent. She was calling out, trying to alert her kin for help, but she was too far from home now.
She hit the wheelbarrow with a repulsive thud. A slight cracking sound and more high-pitched screams followed. His father quickly wheeled the creature to the back of the house, and Jeremy followed wordlessly. When they had reached the tree line, he helped dump the doe onto the grass.
“Come next to me, son,” his father beckoned him away from the creature and to his side.
He lined up his shot, standing with his foot touching the doe’s back leg and the rifle angle down and toward her head. The doe screamed louder, like she could sense the doom standing next to her.
“Now, you want to hit it between the eyes,” he said quietly. “Dispatching an injured animal should be quick.”
With that last word, he squeezed the trigger without warning. Jeremy’s body jumped with the sudden sound. Everything seemed like it slowed down for a second as the doe’s head snapped back with the impact. Then the silence crashed down like heavy rain, causing him to shiver with its arrival. They stood together for a moment, his father and him. Looking back, Jeremy considers that day vital in his development. He saw suffering, pain, and the release of death.
Jeremy walks through his home’s front door and tosses his keys into a copper dish just inside. He imagines that the sudden sound of metal hitting metal probably startles his guests, and the thought of their fear excites him. He walks straight to the sink in the kitchen and begins to scrub his hands vigorously, ridding them of the germs he no doubt picked up at the office. Unbuttoning his dress shirt, he excitedly makes his way toward the basement door. He only stops briefly to hang his shirt on a hook placed strategically on the wall. He smooths his white undershirt before creaking the basement door open and descending the stairs.